Thursday, December 13, 2007

Chanterelle
2 Harrison Street (at Hudson)

It wasn't easy getting a booking here, but me and a friend managed this one evening and went for it. I had always wanted to eat here, and the menus here always looked both adventurious but solid. So I went into this place with extremely high expectations. Unfortunately, a good amount of it wasn't met...

The place is beautiful and would be great for a romantic evening. It has the obligatory high ceilings and open spacing, the look of a classic restaurant's dining room. Very posh and polished. But that was it really...

We had a good table, but it was annoying as the waiters kept bumping into me due to bad placement of tables and chairs in the middle vein of the space. Plus, the floorboards seemed weak, so my chair was rocking a bit when people walked. It's like an old house's dining room...

But all that could be forgiven for a good menu and good food...and that's what I hoped for. For the starter I had the seafood sausage. Interesting, but the middle was cold. Cooking mistake? My friend had the assortment of raw seafood. Looks nice and he said it was nice, but I passed because of the boring selection. Can people get away from salmon and tuna? They've been done to death, and tuna is bloody endangered because of this overuse...

This was not a great start. And for a pricey bottle of red that turned out a bit "table-ish" I was getting disappointed. I usually would go with venison if I see it on a menu, but I was not a big fan of the saddle -- so I went with the roast sturgeon for the main. Mistake. It was sliced and cooked in a way not condusive for sturgeon. This is an oily fish, and nothing here accentuated it. And it seemed it was roasted in a low temperature oven, so it tasted like bland whitefish. My friend had the scallops...which looked like the little ones you buy at...ugh...Gristedes or D'Agostino... Plus the sauce was like a cheap, wannabe fra diavolo. Pathetic.

The desserts were nice, as we both had big ones. The "maple tasting" was not bad, but did not save the meal. Plus, they didn't bring our after dinner drinks for nearly 10 minutes. Unacceptable in a restaurant of this class.

I left Chanterelle very disappointed. It was all talk, no substance. And the service failed too, as did the menu. Every aspect failed. Plus, they didn't feature their namesake! How can you name a restaurant Chanterelle when there was hardly a mushroom to be found on the menu? Ugh...

Food: C
Atmosphere: B
For Lone Diners: C-- (*)

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